On Sun, Apr 25, 2004 at 03:43:48PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
>
> OK, so allow there to be sourceless non-programs. Seems reasonable to me,
> though I might change my mind.
That is *absolutely* the concession that I have been after. I don't
understand why it is so difficult to draw out, considering the
verbal distinction in DFSG between "software" and "program". It seems
that most people would rather use pedantic technicalities to circumvent
the verbage of the DFSG.
> Anyway, we can argue about that later, because it doesn't apply to the cases
> under discussion. :-) The firmware which has been complained about has
> been admitted to be programs by everyone with any understanding of it. For
> instance, the Radeon microcode is a program for running on the video card
> "command processor".
I don't care about the Radeon case. I care about the Radeon
circumstances being applied to all cases, including my video card, for
which the details are quite a bit more murky than a "command processor
program". Using a DFSG#2 basis for something that doesn't clearly fall
under DFSG#2 (the mga "microcode") does not seem like correct procedure
to me, but the way things were going it seemed that everyone was content
to apply DFSG#2 to *everything* in Debian, not just programs.
--
Ryan Underwood, <nemesis@icequake.net>